- Museum number
- 2019,7062.1
- Title
- Object: Two Maps II
- Description
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Two maps of the United States of America, one above the other. Printed in black on white Japan paper laid onto black wove paper. 1966
Lithograph on Japan paper laid onto Fabriano paper
- Production date
- 1966
- Dimensions
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Height: 643 millimetres (image)
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Height: 838 millimetres (sheet)
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Width: 515 millimetres
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Width: 673 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- The map of the USA was one of a number of recurring motifs in Jasper Johns' work. By the time Johns made this print in 1966, he had been representing the map of the United States in his work for around six years in a variety of media and using different printmaking techniques. 'Two Maps II' is a lithograph printed from one stone on white Japan paper laid onto black wove paper. It was printed and published by ULAE (Universal Limited Art Editions), West Islip, New York where Johns created his earliest prints. The BM impression is number 15 from an edition of 30. It was given by the artist to his New York dealer, Leo Castelli. The art historian Barbara Bertozzi Castelli inherited it from her husband in 1999.
Text from Coppel, Daunt and Tallman, 'The American Dream: pop to the present', London: Thames and Hudson in association with the British Museum, 2017, cat. no. 15:
Johns has long exploited the doublings and inversions built into the printing process (positive/negative, left/right, etc.), and nowhere more masterfully than in 'Two Maps II'. Like the flags and targets he began painting in the 1950s, the map of the continental United States appealed as a found structure – a thing ‘the mind already knows’. (Jasper Johns, quoted in Leo Steinberg, ‘Jasper Johns: The First Seven Years of his Art’, in 'Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art', New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972, pp. 17–54 (p. 31).) Repeating the composition of an earlier painting, he drew the map twice, filling in individual states so that borders appear as irregular rivulets of absence. Working with ULAE, he first printed an edition in white ink on black paper, creating a double negative in which the empty borders appear black. In 'Two Maps II', the situation is reversed yet again: the stone was printed in black ink on a thin white paper, which was then laid down on black paper, making it almost impossible to determine which is background and which is drawing. As art historian and curator Richard S. Field observed: ‘For Johns, as in printmaking itself, every positive idea seemingly implies a negative one, everything worth believing is also worth doubting, and every truly significant concept includes its opposite.’ (Richard S. Field, 'The Prints of Jasper Johns 1960–1993: A Catalogue Raisonné', West Islip, NY: Universal Limited Art Editions, 1994, n.p.)
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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2017 9 Mar-18 Jun, London, BM, G30, The American Dream
2018 2 Jun-2 Sept, Paris, Fondation Custodia, The American Dream: pop to the present
2020-21 8 Oct-31 Jan, Madrid, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
2021 2 Mar-13 Jun, Barcelona, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
2021 13 Jul-14 Nov, Zaragoza, La Caixa Forum, The American Dream: pop to the present
- Acquisition date
- 2019
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 2019,7062.1
- Additional IDs
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Other BM number: 2016,AFBMLoan,40.1 (AFBM Loan Number)